Fundamentalist myopia drives US campaign against China
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been groundlessly attacking China. His point of view reflects many US politicians’ hatred toward China and the Communist Party of China (CPC). The US is a country deeply influenced by Christianity. Behind such hatred, there is an extreme religious nationalism, or fundamentalism.
Take Pompeo as an example. He is a devout evangelical Christian. In the 1940s, some fundamentalists who were relatively moderate started to call themselves “evangelicals” and maintained the same theology. Evangelicalism has had a close connection with American politics – many US evangelical Christians, for example, voted for Donald Trump and believed that God has chosen Trump to be US president.
Many evangelical Christians tend to believe that America is a land chosen by God. Jonathan Edwards, an evangelist and one of the dominant figures in the 18th century, once said that “The latter-day glory is probably to begin in America.”
Under such circumstances, it is almost impossible for US politicians like Pompeo to believe the CPC-led China. They regard China as a completely different kind, or a rival of the US. In fact, since Trump took office, US policies toward China have been kidnapped by their deep-rooted religious beliefs.
What’s more, Pompeo and his like firmly believe that the Western civilization dominates global civilization. This being the case, the rise of China, a so-called different civilization, has been regarded as a challenge to Western civilization. As US political scientist and academic Samuel P. Huntington posited in his book Clash of Civilizations, “the rise of China is the potential source of a big intercivilizational war of core states.”
This also explains different countries’ different ways of coping with COVID-19, and why some US politicians such as Pompeo have been trying everything they can to blacken China. China has controlled its domestic COVID-19 epidemic in a relatively short time. Production has been basically restored and people’s lives are also coming back to normal.
This is in stark contrast to the situation in the US. Many US politicians regard the different Chinese and US COVID-19 fights as a “clash of civilizations” between the two countries. Seeing China’s achievements, they worry that China is gaining the upper hand in this contest. And facing China’s rise, they do not want to admit that their deep-rooted beliefs have been shaken.
Thus, Pompeo and some US politicians did not hesitate to fabricate lies to attack China. They have been bragging about how “enormous evidence” shows the COVID-19 outbreak first began in Wuhan’s laboratory, and how the Chinese government has been hiding information. These are all just lame tricks, showing how they are not willing to face reality. These politicians must face up to China’s unstoppable rise. Such deep-rooted fundamentalism, which regards different civilizations as adversaries, is the biggest threat to world peace and development.